


forge a legacy in the fires of a dying sun

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Chapter one, Character Study, Death, M/M, Memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 10:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15906042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Rantaro knows that he has to be the one to end the killing game. Even though his heart aches for something so simple, something far away from this, he feels like he's not allowed to simplylive. Heroes have stories to stick to.





	forge a legacy in the fires of a dying sun

If anyone can end the killing game, it’s him. After all, he’s been singled out as special - if this were a real game, he might even consider himself protagonist; that feeling brings something not quite to the forefront of his mind, like he begged for this in a past life. And now he’s drinking it in, the glass walls, magnifying sunlight through trees in a scene of falsity, the light bursting into his eyes and blurring his vision, making it hard to see unless he looks at the inside of his eyelids and tries to make out a map from the remnants.

Huh, a map. That would be handy right now, and something about that, too, makes him feel closer to himself. Could that be his true talent? Ultimate Cartographer? Ultimate…Adventurer? No, he can’t be - a protagonist has to have some great, plot-important talent; Rantaro suspects that Shuichi has the talent closest to this, but he’s far too shy and self-doubting to be the one to end the killing game, right?

Yeah, he’s selfish. Rantaro will be the first person to admit that, even though such knowledge destroys him; his sisters, likely dead, are gone because he couldn’t expand his view beyond himself and his goals. And the sun goes down, down, down, on another day that could slip away from him as easily as everything else does.

So he takes what he’s been given and he runs with it, fast, beyond the wind, becoming a force within himself to end the killing game. If this is a game, then he’ll be heralded with all the glory that just feels right, golden against his chest - to be Achilles seems a fitting fate for him.

Rantaro, one-track minded as ever, forgets how the story of Achilles ends.

The library frames him like the climax of something only just beginning; plot points not yet written clinging to the loose fabric of his shirt, billowing him into a deity as he creeps ever closer to ending this. Heroes come in too many forms, he thinks, and it’s never enough to just be the one to discover something new or pioneer a new strategy for exploration; he has to sink himself into archetypes and plaster the molten gold of what he should become over his body until he burns with the heat of a million suns.

Because destiny is on his side. Someone has tried to kill him, and failed - he knows this when he sees a shotput ball fall to the ground; no blood seeps onto the smooth curves, because Rantaro Amami knows that he’s destined for greater than this. And doesn’t this just make him even more of a hero? Facing death and living through it to conquer; everyone will finally believe he’s worth more than what he’s ever taken claim of once he tells them that they’re alive because of him.

In this instant, Rantaro Amami loves this shotput ball. His symbol of greatness.

So he tries to solve the mystery, but he has not yet laid bare the roles of his Hector, his Paris. Of course, he imagines his own Patroclus - someone he’s spoken mere words to, but whom he feels as though he can connect with. If Rantaro is the hero, then Korekiyo stands beside him and spurs him to the end. Hector may be the mastermind, killed in spite, but Greek legends are not so linear.

And the shotput ball comes down, down, down, on another day that could slip away from life.

Knowledge is cruel to him when he sees Tsumugi’s face. Death, as cruel as she is kind, does not envelop him as quickly as he would have imagined, but lying paralysed, the story of Achilles comes to a halt in his mind. No longer hero, no longer protagonist, he imagines the pen of the universe striking down his name on another list, doomed to be the worst thing a person can be. Forgotten.

The memories come. Of doing this all before, of living through it only to volunteer to go through it again - half out of selflessness that feels alien to his golden heart, half out of the ache for the apple of glory that ends up as poison in his throat. And yet, it doesn’t matter.

The imaginations come. Of all the things he could have done, were he only a little less filled with pride. Of taking tea with Korekiyo, warm sunlight not magnified, but reflected nonetheless; gardens of flowers drinking in the evening air, and satisfaction without the blinking red light of a camera to validate the fact in his mind that he is real. Of course he’d wanted to broadcast every single detail of who he was - because doing that leaves a mark on this world, an infinitesimal burn scar that says _I exist_ for every eternity that loops around a life. 

How he would have loved to be unlike himself. Not bleeding out on the floor, but able to forgive himself for who he was born into being and live despite the ache for knowledge and recognition. To have such a life, he imagines, would be much better than…this.

Blood chokes him, seeping into the back of his throat, but breathing fades away anyway and Rantaro knows that heroes don’t give up; and yet, he can’t move, it’s been mere moments since he was hit, and he’s lived through the best timeline whilst the worst culminates. All he can do is watch as Tsumugi leaves, his blood decorating the opening scene. How long will it take before his existence is cleaned away and the capstone of this tale forgets that all nature must originate around the dead? Will he be remembered?

Did he do good?

His eyes begin to close, and death isn’t what he fears, even though he knows that the coldness of nothing will soon crackle across his golden chest and shatter it; perhaps he always looked like precious metal, but forgeries are the only thing that matter in here. He is not a protagonist. He is nothing, not even Rantaro Amami any more, just a corpse on the floor of a library. And the sun, having gone down, down, down, stays low; moonlight will turn him away at the door.

He hopes that Korekiyo does not find his body.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked this! Please comment if you did :^)


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